Tamanna Sharma, O.P Jindal Global University
ABSTRACT
From entering law school to coming out of the court halls, one thing remains unchanged, an abundance of male lawyers. A male-dominated profession which lacks diversity whether gender, economic or social is one which has to be pondered upon. If we consider the male and female ratio in law schools, there is a drastic gap between the number of male students to female students.1 If we see the courtrooms, there are hardly any female judges and if female advocates enter the courtrooms, all eyes just question her presence.2 A man’s success at handling legal cases is considered to be normal and if a woman wins a case, her success is abnormally applauded. Arbitration is no exception to this discrimination and homogeneity of maleness.3 The number of female arbitrators differs, their genre of cases differ, their pay scale and fee is given to them differ, the treatment towards them is different and the differences just don’t end at these.4 In 2015, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) had witnessed only 10% appointment of women arbitrators, Singapore International Arbitration Centre (SIAC) had appointed less than a quarter of female arbitrators.5India does not only witness an imbalance in the appointment of women advocates and arbitrators but the cases pending in various courts also differ.6 As of 2015, there were thirty- 1 NLSIU - National Law School of India University, “Report on Diversity”, Youth 4 work (2022) one million pending cases in courts regarding dispute resolution and it is estimated that it takes around twenty years for dispute resolution cases to get resolved.
